


The Boy I Left Behind

by LeeAtwater



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Children, F/M, Gen, Pining, Sappy, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeeAtwater/pseuds/LeeAtwater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lieutenant Boyd at Camp McCarran has a damned good reason to make it back to California alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy I Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChocoChipBiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/gifts).



Gabriel Boyd was generally a happy man. He had a wife, three kids, and a house in Redding with running water and not too much of a radroach problem. His wife made a comfortable enough living for him to stay home with the children and indulge in his passion for painting. The only problem was the nature of her work.

The NCR Army was an honorable institution, but he desperately wished that she'd chosen another field. It hadn't been so bad when Carrie was stationed nearby. She had an easy job, disciplining unruly soldiers who got too drunk or were a little too loose with the army's supplies, and she could visit Gabe on the weekends. One of those overly passionate weekend reunions resulted in the triplets. But if you wanted to move up in the army, you couldn't stay in California forever.

When she'd initially been promoted to sergeant major and given her new assignment, she'd made it sound like she'd be shepherding drunk troopers around Vegas and sleeping in a king-size bed every night. The triplets had been six months old when Carrie left, two boys and a girl, and she sobbed uncontrollably when she had to say goodbye. “Tell them about me, tell them how much I loved them, if I don't ever come back,” she'd told Gabe. That was the first sign that the Mojave wasn't going to be a walk in the park. It was only after she left that he heard the horror stories from the East about the huge army and what they did to any unfortunate soldier of the NCR that happened to be captured alive. If he'd known before, he'd have done anything to get her reassigned.

One year of nothing but heavily censored letters and promises to return safely. Gabe's parents and Carrie's mother helped with the children, but nothing could soothe the fear that was constantly weighing on Gabe's mind. Carrie wasn't allowed to tell him where she was stationed, but he'd badgered the information out of an NCR veteran who was a poker buddy of his. He'd told Gabe that she was assigned to Camp Forlorn Hope, with intermittent trips to Nelson. The name was bad enough, but when the veteran had given him a map and pointed out the location of the camps, Gabe found he had trouble sleeping, even though dealing with three toddlers left him physically and mentally exhausted. He'd pull out the map and examine it by flashlight, placing his fingers between her possible positions and the enormous camp on the other side of the river. Two fingers between Forlorn Hope and the Fort. Three between Nelson and the Fort. Barely a thumb between either of them and the river.

Every day he'd expect the knock on his door, followed by two solemn Rangers bearing a letter and a flag. But it never came. And when he got the letter that said she was coming home, that was the day he taught the triplets how to dance.

Carrie was only back in Redding for a month, but it felt like longer. She'd gotten a promotion, she told him, up to lieutenant, and this time she really was going to Vegas. Or at least a base just outside of Vegas. A nice, solid base with sturdy walls and heavily armed soldiers. Two fists away from the Fort, at least. He wondered why the promotion had moved her further away from the action, and a week before she had to go back, she told him that all the women had been moved from Forlorn Hope. There had been incidents. Heavy losses. Nelson had been taken, its occupants killed or crucified or 'sent away.' Gabe got the feeling that the last option was considered to be the worst, although Carrie wouldn't elaborate. Men were left injured by the river, their bodies surrounded with mines, so anyone who tried to save them was killed. Even worse things that she wouldn't tell him about, but he'd sometimes catch her praying, repeating a list of names like a mantra while tears streamed down her face. They'd come to an agreement; she'd never accept an assignment in the East again.

“I'll knock you up again, if it comes to that,” Gabe said, smiling and running his fingers through Carrie's hair as they lay in bed. It was one of their rare times alone after the triplets were all finally in bed. “Quadruplets this time. They'll send you out on a medical discharge for hyperfertility. Hell, claim that Hsu is the father of two of them, and Moore is the father of the others. That'll get you kicked out quickly enough.”

“You do know that Moore's a woman, right?” asked Carrie, laughing. “I mean, not that it matters much, she's married to the NCR, but unless that stick up her ass is fertile I doubt she'll be making babies anytime soon.”

“Then they'll give you a psych discharge. Anything's better than going back there.”

When Carrie left again, the children cried and demanded to know why. Their father's words about honor and service didn't make any impression on them, so he just told them she had to go fight bad guys and keep them safe. They seemed to accept that. Now that they were old enough to understand where Mommy had gone, she sent back presents for them. Pictures from New Vegas, her and her friends smiling under the neon lights of the Strip, the shows at the Tops Theater (but thankfully not the ones at Gomorrah), the oddly dressed members of the White Glove Society strolling down from the Ultra-Luxe. She even managed to pick up a few toys. The kids loved the plastic dinosaurs, but he'd had to spend some time soaking the metal rockets she'd sent in Rad-Away before they stopped registering on his Geiger counter. He never told Carrie. It was the thought that counted.

Every once in a while, one of Carrie Boyd's uniforms would get stained or ripped or mysteriously disappear. She'd report it diligently to her superiors, then sneak the old one away. When she'd collected three in a row, she'd send them back home to Gabe. The kids, well into their toddler years now, adored their new security blankets. “They smell like Mommy,” Nicholas said, clutching his oversized NCR jacket, although it had been long enough that they'd probably forgotten what Mommy even looked like.

In return, Gabe kept the clothing that the children grew out of (and they grew so fast, my God, what were his parents feeding them?) He'd cut them into squares and sewn them painstakingly together. A few more weeks and he'd have Carrie's birthday present, a beautiful patchwork quilt of her children's infancy and toddler years to keep her warm on those cold desert nights, one that would remind her what she had waiting at home every time she got stressed or scared or exhausted.

Hsu had promised her a promotion when the war was over. Carrie'd told him she could be busted back to private for all she cared, as long as she got to be in California with her family. He told her that wouldn't be necessary. There was need for a captain in Shady Sands, to replace the one they'd had to send out to take the vacant spot of “Captain Curtis”. It wouldn't be nearly as exciting, a lot of desk work, but there would be more money and relocation expenses and housing on the base. He didn't even have to continue, just smiled and blinked back tears of his own as she gasped out a thank you.

She hadn't mentioned it to Gabe yet. When the war was over, if they won, _when_ they won, she'd tell him about the new job. They could all be together again. She'd watch her sons and daughter grow up, safe and happy, and they'd never have to know how close it had all come to being destroyed. She hadn't told Gabe this, and would probably never tell him, but she'd only left Nelson an hour before the Legion attacked the outpost. Some things were better kept to herself.


End file.
